Microsoft’s Outlook.com sheds its preview tag, reaches 60 million users in six months

After launching the successor to Hotmail last summer in a preview state, Microsoft earlier today removed the preview tag and officially announced the launch of Outlook.com. Microsoft also announced that Outlook.com is currently the fastest growing email service and has reached 60 million active users in less than 6 months, a third of which have come from Gmail.

Hotmail users who are not too keen on this change will still be able to keep their @hotmail.com id, username and password according to Microsoft, while those looking for a new @outlook.com id can register for one immediately. Microsoft has also stopped the use of its messenger service and moving over to Skype as its default chat client. It further announced that more than 25 million Outlook.com customers have embraced the online SkyDrive service to share over a half billion photos and Office documents. The change from Hotmail to Outlook and from Messenger to Skype is taking place in a phased manner.

Microsoft is also aggressively spending millions on a new marketing campaign for the webmail, to lure more users away from Gmail. The advertisements show everyday people using webmail to do just about anything in their day to day lives and some of them have also been attacking Gmail’s privacy issues. You can see two advertisements below: